


On the Nature of Daylight

by AstralAsteria



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Eva is a witch, F/M, Gen, Magic, Perception of Time, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 22:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstralAsteria/pseuds/AstralAsteria
Summary: Time is a tricky business.Eva knew this long before she set her sights on time magic as her area of study. Her mentor had warned her against it: “Dangerous things can come from peering into one’s own future or past, my dear Eva. Do you think you can handle that?”She did—she had.





	On the Nature of Daylight

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by Arrival, which I watched again. It got me thinking about what it would mean to be a witch who specializes in magic that controls the flow of time. As with most time travel/time shenanigans, it probably does not make a ton of sense under scrutiny, but if you're familiar with Arrival (or the short story that inspired it) you will get the gist of it.
> 
> Title from this song on the Arrival soundtrack: [On the Nature of Daylight.](https://open.spotify.com/track/7j4G2lqrTZdDlHgR27A9r3) It makes for good accompanying music.

Time is a tricky business. 

Eva knew this long before she set her sights on time magic as her area of study. Her mentor had warned her against it: “Dangerous things can come from peering into one’s own future or past, my dear Eva. Do you think you can handle that?” She did—she had. 

Eva chose the study of time because the possibilities of it fascinated her. There was much that could be done by manipulating time, by freezing a moment in life like a photograph, delaying the inevitable for only a fraction of a second. You could dodge impossible attacks, could create complex pockets of time and space to enhance your abilities. 

You could buy someone a last goodbye with that power, if you needed to. 

***  
Sparda is standing next to her, a hand on her shoulder. He looks at her with such wonder in his eyes, such love and awe.

“Twins?” he whispers, as if he is afraid of the word, as if it will cease to be real if he says it out loud. She smiles at him, reaching up to hold his hand--he’s always so warm. She’ll forget how warm he is, over time. It’s soothing to hold his hand now and remember.

“Twins,” she whispers back on the ghost of a laugh.

He sighs--it morphs into a laugh of his own. He bends down and pulls her into his arms from behind, pressing his face into her hair, as he whispers: “Twins. A father. Who would have ever imagined?”

She did. She knew.

***  
Eva had always loved stories that involved time. Time paradoxes, timeloops, loved ones displaced through time to see someone dear to them once more. It fueled her obsession in her studies, although she had learned, eventually, that time was immovable and unchanging. You cannot change your past, because you cannot visit your past. If you change the past, you have created a new future, but the previous future is still your past. It did not cease to exist--you have just created a new branch of time in which things will progress differently.

Changing the past was never Eva’s intention when she began her studies of time. Eva was a woman with conviction—she stood by her decisions, for better or for worse, and she learned, and she moved on. 

That does not make it any easier, in the end.

***  
“I have to leave,” he says, and she looks at him with a sad, knowing smile, and she thinks of her sons in the next room, curled together in bed. Perhaps she should have warned them about this day. Perhaps she should have warned him.

Perhaps she should have better prepared herself. 

She knows it would not have mattered.

“I know.”

“It is for their safety. For yours,” Sparda says, holding her hands in his own, kissing her knuckles, her fingertips, her palms. She simply continues to smile. She had sworn to herself that she would put on a brave face in this moment, and so she shall.

“I know.”

“If I can, I will come back.” He won’t. She knows, and he knows, too, that she cannot stop him.

“I know.”

She falls into his embrace one last time.

The next morning, he hands each of their children two things: an amulet, imbued with his power, and a weapon, bound to their souls. Her beautiful boys look at him as if he is the wisest, strongest man in the world (he is) and believe him when he says that he will return someday.

She deliberates telling them. She stays awake at night wondering what she should say, if she could say it, if it will ease their anxieties.

But she knows that she will not. Sometimes a little hope is worth it.

***  
Mastering time magic had taken trial and error, but it was not the magic which proved the most difficult—it was the perception of it. Humans, by nature, view time in a linear fashion: beginning, middle, and end. To begin to manipulate time, one must begin to perceive time as it really is: existing all at once, a flat circle where all points in one’s life coexist, happening concurrently. Past, present, and future. 

To understand this is to see one’s life laid bare, to experience all things at once, all of the pain, the joy, the suffering, and the love. 

She learns that she is okay with knowing. There is almost a comfort in it, in knowing the trajectory of one’s life through the years. She feels no less joy in moments of happiness for knowing their outcome; no less sadness, in turn. She experiences life the way that she knows she will: with conviction and with joy, unafraid of what will come.

***  
They are lying on the sofa together in a rare moment of silence. Dante has his brother’s legs draped across his own, which he is using as a table on which to spread out his most recent dried flowers. Vergil is buried in a book, an ink pen held in his small fist and a look of concentration etched on his face. He points at one of the small herbs with his pen. 

“What’d that one taste like?” He asks, and Dante picks it up, twirling it between his fingers. 

“Gross. Like… bitter. Really bitter,” her youngest replies, nose curling in disgust at the memory of the taste. “Smells bad, too, and it made my mouth feel all funny.”

From the doorway, Eva laughs. Her boys notice her then, looking up from their book and piles of plants to greet her with twin smiles and an echoing “hi mommy!”

“Do you know what that flower is called, sweetie?” Eva asks. She stays in the hallway. She wants them to have this moment—peace is rare between them. It is a happy memory amongst a sea of complicated pasts and futures. 

“Mmm, nope,” Dante says. Vergil considers this for a longer moment, before he shakes his head. 

“What is it?” He asks, always so curious, so eager for knowledge. 

“It is called herb Robert. Or Geranium robertianum, if you prefer,” she says, and Vergil, bless his heart, immediately begins to sound out the Latin phrase in an effort to write it into his book. He is such a particular child, exacting and precise, too serious for his scant years.

She sees herself in him in that way.

“It’s commonly used to treat a toothache,” she supplies. Vergil nods and takes notes; Dante picks up the offending flower and sniffs it once more, recoiling in horror.

“It’s really gross,” he says, spinning it around and around, a little pinwheel in his small fingers. She smiles. 

“It is. But even something so unpleasant and bitter can be useful,” she crosses the library floor, standing at the side of the couch before her children, and she drops her hands on their heads. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve found so far?”

They curl up on the couch together, one on either side of her, and she listens quietly as they excitedly explain their findings. It is a moment she has always cherished.

***  
If there is anything that the knowing changes about Eva, it is her resolve to live her life openly, her emotions and her thoughts on her sleeve. She does not hesitate to express her love, her regrets; to say what is on her mind, to clear up misunderstandings and to never go to bed angry. 

Sparda knew that Eva knew. It was the blessing of marrying a man not of this world: he understood things, decisions she had made, that most other humans did not. When she told him her expertise in magic, the consequences—and blessings—that it afforded her, she had asked if he wanted to know. 

“I think I would like to be surprised,” he’d said, holding her close as they lay together in their newly purchased bed in their newly purchased home. “I’ve had enough magic in my life time. I will trust you with this one. But I promise to make each moment count.”

She knows that he will, yet she is happy to hear it from him anyway. They will create a beautiful life together in a beautiful home, like something from a dream, and one day, when she loses it all, she will remember this—that they had been happy. That they had created a life that she was proud of, had born two wonderful sons she was proud of, and no matter how it will end, she will be happy knowing that she experienced it. 

However fleeting it may ultimately be. 

***  
In her last moments, her only regret is not being able to find Vergil. It is the only thing she had tried to alter, useless though she knew it would be, but despite her words of caution, her eldest son is not in the house when she searches for him. 

Dante will be okay. She thinks Vergil will as well, although she does not know this with certainty. Time has only revealed itself to her in the context of her life—where she ends, so, too, does her knowledge. 

She hopes that what she has taught them will be enough. That they will remember the good things alongside the bad. That they will grow strong. That they will find each other again. 

Maybe this was selfish of her, choosing to live this life the way that she had, not telling them, not trying to alter their course. Maybe she could have found a way.

And yet as she lies there, thinking on these things, she knows she is happy with the life that she has led. 

She only hopes that her children will be able to say the same, some day.

***  
“Mommy! Look what I found!” Dante says, running to her through the yard, his brother at his heels. They are both smiling--wide and bright and so innocent. She sits her gardening tools to the side and she turns to face them, greeting them with open arms.

They run to her immediately. Vergil comes to her first, fitting into her embrace and putting one small arm on her back. He smiles up at her.

Dante stands before her, offering her a flower. It is red and pink with white edges--a starburst lily. She did not realize they grew on the property.

“Is this for me?” She asks, and Dante nods vigorously. She takes it from his small hands and welcomes him into her arms alongside his brother. Eva kisses them each on the head--Vergil first, then Dante twice, then Vergil once more--and luxuriates in their embrace, their warmth, the smell of grass and dirt that clings to their skin.

“Thank you, darlings,” she says, and then she holds them close, and she memorizes this moment, etching it into her mind.

“I love you, mom,” Vergil says, looking at her with this curiously serious expression, as if he knows that something is troubling her. Her grip around his shoulder tightens, and Dante immediately follows his brother’s lead with a proclamation of love of his own.

“And I love you both,” she says, and she thinks about where she has been, and where she will end up, and she feels so incredibly blessed to have them in her life. Against Vergil’s hair she says quietly, “Thank you.”


End file.
